Holy Island

Holy Island or Lindisfarne (lĭn`dĭsfärn), off the coast of Northumberland, NE England. At low tide the island is connected with the mainland by a stretch of sand. It is partly cultivated, and tourism and fishing are important. A church and monastery, built in 635 under St. Aidan, represented the first establishment of Celtic Christianity in England. Saint Cuthbert was the most famous of the bishops of Holy Island. The settlement was burned by the Danes in 793 but rebuilt. When the Danes invaded in 875, the monks fled, wandering for eight years until they settled at Chesterle-Street in 883. The bishopric was maintained for 112 years there and moved to Durham in 995. A Benedictine priory was set up on the island in 1083 by monks from Durham. Remains of a church and of an early 16th-century castle are there. The Lindisfarne Gospels or Book of Durham is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the Gospels, now housed in the British Museum. It was written at Holy Island before 700; an Anglo-Saxon gloss was added at Durham in the 10th cent.

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Lindisfarne

 or Holy Island

Historic small island 2 mi (3 km) from the English Northumbrian coast. It became a religious centre in 635, when St. Aidan established a monastery and church there. It was abandoned in 875 because of the threat of Danish raids, but the monastery was refounded in 1082 and survived until the dissolution of the monasteries (1536–40) under Henry VIII. The manuscript of the Lindisfarne Gospels (c. 696–698) is one of the finest surviving illuminated manuscripts of the period. Lindisfarne's present-day parish church may occupy the site of St. Aidan's original monastery.

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Holy Island

1. an island off the NE coast of Northumberland, linked to the mainland by road but accessible only at low water: site of a monastery founded by St Aidan in 635

2. an island off the NW coast of Anglesey. Area: about 62 sq. km (24 sq. miles)